Roamer Research

Explorations in space with visually impaired children and a floor turtle

This article was originally published under the title – Tactile turtle: explorations in space with visually impaired children and a floor turtle – in Vol. VII No 1 of: The British Journal of Visual Impairment , Spring 1989. Extracts were also printed in Vol 1 of Valiant’s Go Magazine, January 1990 and were on the old Valiant Web Site under the title: A Roamer in Space. In this article Roamer and Turtle floor robots are synonymous.

Penny Gay is a Peripatetic Support Teacher Cornwall Advisory Service for Visually Impaired Children. This article contains extracts from an unpublished dissertation from the University of Birmingham , 1988. It describes and evaluates a practical project in which blind and partially sighted children used a floor turtle to find out about space. In particular, the activities gave them valuable experience in using the concepts of right and left and in performing accurate facing movements.